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There’s a plant that explodes into life in Oxford’s Uni­ver­sity Parks each year that, for me, sounds the klaxon for spring. It far out­strips me in size and its shock of yel­low, sprout­ing branches, shoot­ing wildly from a car­pet of blue flowers, is so joy­ously absurd that every­one stops to stare.

Its start­ling col­ours and eccent­ric shape always remind me of the work of Joan Miro. ‘For me, an object is alive’, the Span­ish artist once said. ‘I see a tree, I get a shock, as if it were some­thing breath­ing, talk­ing. A tree too is some­thing human…’ Miro would have liked this crazy hair-cut of a plant. I feel sure it would have helped him with his work on the appar­ently impossible notion of four-dimensional art, since it’s a plant with just too much life, too much exuber­ance to be trapped by only three dimensions.

Being some­thing of a picnic-obsessive, the flower­ing of what I think of as the ‘Miro plant’ is my sig­nal for meals out­side (although winter often brings good pic­nic oppor­tun­it­ies too, for the thick-coat owner). I have a long rep­er­toire of pic­nic recipes by now. But I’ve just devised this new one, in cel­eb­ra­tion of the Miro plant’s arrival.

1 ball of smoked moz­zarella (plain moz­zarella is good too, if you’re stuck)

Make the flat­bread bat­ter by whisk­ing all the ingredi­ents together and allow­ing to rest for at least two hours, or overnight if your prefer, covered. The mix­ture will make six flat­breads — two left over for the sug­ges­tion at the bot­tom of this recipe.

Heat a small, non stick fry­ing pan/skillet on the hob until hot. Ladle in a spoon­ful of bat­ter — about 1/6th of your mix­ture and enough to coat the pan — and cook on a high heat for 2 minutes, until the bot­tom of the flat­bread has browned nicely. Flip it over with a spat­ula and cook the other side for a fur­ther one to two minutes. Repeat until you’ve used up all the bat­ter. Stack up the flat­breads and turn to the mushrooms.

Melt the but­ter with the olive oil in a large fry­ing pan over a medium heat. Add the mush­rooms, gar­lic, thyme and season­ing and cook until the mush­rooms are softly golden. Remove from the heat.

When ready to assemble your flat­breads, pre­heat your grill. Slice the smoked moz­zarella and divide between the four flat­breads. Divide the mush­rooms evenly too and pile on top of the moz­zarella — you can do this neatly or cas­u­ally, whichever method suits your patience and your aes­thet­ics. Place the breads on a grill pan and grill until the moz­zarella has become mol­ten. Remove from the heat and trickle over a little truffle oil. Either eat them in the warmth of your kit­chen, or fold them over and wrap them up ready for your picnic.

You will have two flat­breads left over — these are good spread with hum­ous. They’re also deli­cious if you dip pieces into a little olive oil and then dab them into a mix­ture of crushed pista­chios, cumin, sumac and salt.

Joan Miro was both invent­ive and revolu­tion­ary. He once said of his art that ‘the more local some­thing is, the more it is uni­ver­sal’. The man who brought us sear­ingly vivid litho­graphs, tapestries, paint­ings and sculp­tures also, as it turned out, devised the most per­fect man­tra for eat­ing too. Local equals uni­ver­sal. Brilliant.